Pinch-hitter Kyle Maxie lifted a fly ball into shallow right, and third-base coach Chad Caillet had Stevens tagging and testing Jonathan Pigott’s arm. Pigott’s throw was perfect and had Stevens beat by 10 feet. Stevens, though, barreled through catcher Buddy Munroe and immediately was ejected by umpire Paul Guillie. – ESPN

I have a problem with how this was dealt with.  First off, yes in amateur baseball your suppose to slide and try to avoid contact, ok no problem there we all know that.  When the catcher is up the line, which in this case he clearly was, you have every right to blow through him because you have no other option unless you want to retreat (pointless).  The umpire overreacted with the decision probably not even thinking about the fact the catcher was up the line.  When will college umpires realize that at this point in a baseball career you must accept your actions and if you are willing to stand up the line, the runner has every right to blow through you.  Of course in the professional ranks the runner can blow through you no matter what but we are talking about blocking the line NOT standing on the plate or just in front.

/rant

One thing that I wish is that my Blackberry had a mobile blogging solution. Don’t get me wrong I use MobilePress on this blog and it looks great for mobile version, but there isn’t really any good way for me to edit or make posts. It does seem that RIM is working on this though according to Berry Review.  The iPhone already has an app that does this so it does make me jealous at least for the moment.  I would think that just having a Blackberry or smartphone for that matter makes you more likely to blog.

/rant

Well this week I had my card pulled for a jury duty.  So let me start off by saying that it was an early day.  I had to go downtown and wait for this shuttle which came at 7:25am.  That was the first unappealing thing but also we had to check in around 7:40am at the courthouse.  That was all just the first two steps to the process.  Next I had to wait around till about 10:30am to find out we might not even get questioned for a trial.  At about 10:45am we were notified that the trial was settled so not even a single question answered.  That was the extent of my jury duty service.  I mean if I went I should at least get to see a trial right?  If you haven’t been summoned yet, that is basically what you have to look forward to.  Of course you do get paid though so at least time isn’t free.  The best thing is that everybody has to do it in their life so its not completely unfair.

/rant

If you haven’t heard, today Manny Ramirez was hit with a 50 game suspension for testing positive with one of the banned supplements.  Pretty big news since yet another big name star is in trouble.  Also the book on A-Rod’s life (A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez) written by Selena Roberts was released on Monday to the public.  I understand there are people out there saying “A-Rod is still good regardless of what he uses” and similar comments regardless of content.  Let me think here about the American ideal of working hard.  “If you work hard you can do anything you want.”  Hmm I don’t see anywhere in that ideal anything about needing drugs or PED’s to achieve your goal.  If you are ok with athletes using these drugs then why not adopt the policy “do whatever it takes.”  Sports are suppose to be the result of hard work and dedication with what you naturally have been given not what you can manipulate with modern science.  Now if drug testing were not present then ok great let the person with the best scientists win but not if there is testing.

/rant

First of all you can find my bracket here.

I would like to just thank a couple of teams for not coming through in the clutch.  First we have Missouri who has been playing great especially with a huge win over Memphis.  Well I guess they decided to stop there because they definitely should have beat UCONN.  Next up we have Pitt who basically gave up an easy lay-up to lose the game … GREAT JOB …. especially since they were set to be my National Champs.  In one day I went from sitting pretty to not having a prayer.  Anyways I just wanted to rant about something so there you go.